Since finishing touring in 2018, the ‘Breezeblocks’ artists have become fathers and moved to London to start work on their latest album, ‘The Dream’, out this February…
32 year old musician and recent father, Gus, discusses how ‘The Dream’ reflects the uncertainty of life during the pandemic, and how the upcoming release is a more personalised album than previous ones, while still drawing on the much loved features which made their first album so special.
Featuring soundbites from their parents and partners, the crow which perches outside their recording studio, and the ice cream van which drives past daily, the band’s pianist, Gus Unger-Hamilton has described the album as “perfect”.
So Gus, what have the band been up to since finishing your last album?
“Well we finished touring our last album at the end of 2018, then we took the year off in 2019, we did personal stuff, I got married. Then we got the band going again in 2020 to start working on the new album.
“We found a studio in London that we could rent so we worked there and recorded there but because Tom, our drummer, is classed as ‘vulnerable’ we still couldn’t really work through lockdowns, but that was fine, we still worked on writing songs in those periods so it wasn’t a waste of time and to be honest taking a longer time on the album has actually made it a better record.”
What is the inspiration behind The Dream?
“It’s inspired by this Picasso painting called ‘The Dream’ and it was just a really nice name we thought and we looked at using the Picasso painting for the artwork for the album, but as you can imagine that was really hard and we hit a brick wall pretty fast.
“But by that part the name had stuck and we felt it worked well for many reasons. I think the pandemic period and lockdowns has a slight quality of a dream where you’re not quite sure what day it is or even sometimes I’ve found myself in the last couple of years like opening the fridge or something and for a split second not knowing what time of year it is or questioning if it’s summer or winter, it’s really strange.
“Also, I think the way the album moves seamlessly from happy to unsettling to dark and strange and it’s constantly shifting and twisting in that way sort of makes you feel like you’re in a dream, one minute you’re walking around your house and then realise it’s your primary school. I think the album has something of that quality to it.”
What makes this album stand out from your others?
“I think there are more personal touches in this album than we’ve ever had on a record before. We tried really hard to give it a sense of place when we recorded it, it was all recorded in this one particular area of London so we recorded our strings for the album in the local church and used the local school choir and this ice cream van that went past our studio every day at about three o’clock. There was this crow that was always in the tree outside our studio that we recorded as a sample.
“We had a lot of our family and friends on the album as well, whether its singing or doing spoken word samples, you know our parents our partners, people like that, so it does have a very personal feel and we’ve left these Easter eggs for people to discover and we hope that people will keep coming back to the album and finding more things in it the more they listen to it.”
What do you think listeners will love about it?
“I think that for this album we did talk about trying to recapture what it was that made our first album so special for people and I think that on that first album there were upbeat songs and heartfelt songs as well as darker songs and I feel that maybe we descended into the dark too much on our last album. I still think it was a really good album but I think that for some people the tone was a bit dark and we wanted to give people this time something that had lighter moments on it too.”
Does the album have a message?
“I suppose it’s communicating that we are still really enjoying making music together and if you can imagine making music as a sort of computer game landscape, I feel like we still haven’t found the edge of the game, as it were, and that there is still uncharted territory for us out there creatively and musically. I hope that this album is us mapping out another large section and saying that there are still virgin lands out there waiting for us to discover.”
Have there been events in your lives which have directly influenced the new songs?
“I think that the pandemic definitely had an effect on the album for example there’s a song called ‘Get Better’ which is about a someone losing a loved one to an unspecified illness and it makes reference to front line workers and I think it is the first time we have addressed world events so literally and I think that would never have happened in other circumstances. Also, we are all growing up in the band and like two of us have kids now.”
Do you have a favourite memory from recording the album?
“It was my birthday when we recorded and like many people in lockdown I had got very into baking sourdough and I made a very nice loaf, maybe the best I’ve ever made, and I brought it into the studio and ordered some salt beef on the internet and I brought in the sourdough and salt beef and pickles and mustard and we made salt beef sandwiches in the studio and that was a very nice day.”
Do you have a favourite song from the album?
“I think it’s the first track ‘Bane’ that one was certainly my favourite when we were making the album, I think because it has like two or three songs in one. It’s so long, it’s a real journey musically and it’s got everything from a catch chorus to a building intro with mediaeval instruments which look like upside down walking sticks.
“There’s also a track called ‘Losing My Mind’ which doesn’t sound like anything we’ve done before. It has a post punk sound which is a kind of music which I very much like and since we’ve been rehearsing for the tour it’s been a pleasure to play and I can’t wait to play it live.”
How does it feel to release the album so soon?
“I’m very excited. It’s always a nice feeling having a new album in the can and I think because we finished it so long ago I have to keep reminding myself that no one has really heard it and I’m really buzzing for everyone to hear it, I think it’s our best album yet, I think it’s perfect.”
Finally, what’s next for alt-J?
“It will be very nice to tour the UK again. Touring the UK is how it all began for us and I think the new songs are going to sound great on stage. It will be ten years since our first album next year and it will be great to play all these old songs again and get a bit emotional.
“It would be nice to release another album quickly this time, I hope. We seem to be in quite a fruitful period of song writing at the moment which is quite unusual for us really, so we’ll see, but I think the future is bright.”
alt-J have released three studio albums that, between them, have sold more than two million copies and their songs have been streamed over two and a half billion times. The band have already started 2022 with a bang, releasing ‘The Dream’s’ third song ahead of the album release. The song, ‘Hard Drive Gold’ is said to be a spiritual successor to 2014’s Left Hand Free’ and is inspired by the rise of cryptocurrency. Hard Drive Gold follows “Get Better” the stirring centrepiece of forthcoming album and “U&ME” an inspired snapshot of the band’s experiences of playing summer festivals in Australia.
‘The Dream’ tour commences in May.
